Sunday, January 29, 2012

Gender Apartheid Taxi Company Launched in Germany

Call it a pure case of demand (for gender-segregated transportation) resulting in supply:

NORDERSTEDT, Germany – A German Muslim has introduced the country’s first Muslim taxi service through which Germans can arrange shared car rides of the same sex, The Local.de website reported on Friday, January 27.

“Many Muslim brothers and sisters complained that they can’t use conventional offers because the gender segregation stipulated by Islam is not implemented,” Selim Reid, a 24-year-old from Norderstedt, city of about 70,000 near Hamburg, told the Hamburger Abendblatt newspaper. The idea of the website, Muslimtaxi.de, was first introduced by Reid after a personal experience of his parents.

He said he was inspired to create the site because of Muslims’ bad ride-sharing experiences.

In 1996, his parents, who are originally from Iraq, caught a ride with a Muslim-hating driver who spent the whole time criticizing them.

“The driver and the people with him swore the whole way about foreigners in general and in particular about my mother’s head scarf,” Reid told the newspaper.

“He thought that my parents do not understand German,” he added...

I'm pretty sure what "inspired" him is the "gender segregation stipulated by Islam," but for PR purposes that story about his folks' ordeal puts a nice "victim" spin on things, don't you think?